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Sohar Port and Freezone recently handled the maiden call of Hawaiian Highway, one of the world’s largest car carriers, at the port’s general cargo terminal. The ship is K-Line’s newest and largest vehicle carrier, with a length of almost 200m and a width of 38m, and is deployed as part of a service that will be calling regularly in Sohar.
The new K-Line service complements the port’s already impressive list of direct connections, which has seen the addition of a number of major new shipping lines over the past few months. In May this year, Sohar announced the addition of a regular service from Evergreen, and in June Hanjin added a new Far East service, directly linking the port with South Korea, China, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Car traffic moving through Sohar has increased by over 180 per cent so far this year, with the port attracting new business to the region, as well as winning traffic from Jebel Ali. The first Toyota vehicles offloaded at the port were recently taken to a state-of-the-art presales finishing centre in the adjacent Freezone. The brand new facility, built and managed by Saud Bahwan, is one of the first to be opened in what will become a significant automobile cluster in Sohar, designed to serve the regional car and commercial vehicle industry.
Sohar Freezone chief executive, Jamal Aziz, commented: “It’s great to see one of the world’s largest vessels delivering thousands of new vehicles to the port, with many of them destined for our new automobile cluster in our Freezone, before they are transported to regional dealerships. It is this kind of synergy that that will help us to build a sustainable logistics infrastructure to support Oman in achieving our Vision 2020 objectives.”
